They came to build China’s EV future. Investigators found conditions akin to ‘slavery.’ Dozens of Chinese men were getting off a bus and heading into a pair of squat two-story buildings at the end of the road. Oliveira assumed the outsiders had some type of meeting and would soon be on their way. She’d been inside the structures, painted dark green, and knew they weren’t nearly big enough to house them all. But one day turned to the next, and soon Oliveira realized her new neighbors — 56 itinerant Chinese laborers, none of whom spoke any Portuguese — were here to stay. As weeks passed, Oliveira’s curiosity deepened. Their food was prepared in an improvised kitchen in the garage, amid industrial detritus and vermin, and they never seemed to do anything for fun. All they did was work. “Seven days a week,” Oliveira, 35, recalled. “Sunday to Sunday. I never saw any taking a day off.” They departed every morning at dawn and didn’t return until dusk. The hours in between were spent hel...
